When leverage doesn’t work…get the power tools!
As you may have seen below, I talked about using leverage to break free a stubborn bottom bracket. Well unfortunately leverage wasn’t enough when I was I working on my daughter’s new-to-her bike. I recently purchased her a Giant Boulder that was a 21 speed.
I wanted to swap out her drive train to a 9 speed, but before I could do that, I had to remove the cranks and bottom bracket. I spent about an hour trying to use leverage to loosen the drive side cup. Heck I even used my old Thule rook rack load bar, but all that did was break a few teeth on the splines in the cup. So I figured, I should spray some lube in the shell and come back in another hour to have another go at it. An hour later, using the same load bar…still stuck.
Then I thought, what if I use my impact gun that I normally use to remove my car wheels, I wasn’t certain if this would work or not. But I might as well try. I attached my BB tool and pulled the trigger on the impact gun and BAM! The cup came out! Holy crap man…if I had only used that in the beginning I wouldn’t have wasted so much time!
Funny thing about his whole thing, I never would have thought that an automotive specific tool would have worked on this bicycle related problem.
My LBS has a workstand bolted to a bench and a bar about the length of a baseball bat that they use to extend the reach of a large wrench… I’ve always wished for that setup when dealing with bottom brackets. Maybe what I need is more power tools though… something to consider…
One thing I was going to try to get an 8mm bolt with washers and a nut, then screw in the BB tool with that bolt to secure it in place so it doesn’t get loose. then using a large wrench with a cheater bar and crank. But I figured the hammering action of the Impact Gun should work.
Here I thought RL stood for Red Lamborghinin but in actuality it means Ridiculous (ammounts of) Leverage.
awesome! yeah, I usually end up bolting the BB tool to the cup and using a wrench and pipe like you mentioned, or clamping the tool part into a bench vise and using the entire bike frame as leverage… but that’s a HASTLE!! Next time, I’m breaking out the impact wrench!